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Spiritual

17 Jun 2018

You shouldn’t kill spiders when you find them in your home, expert claims

If you find an enormous spider in your house, it can be difficult to damp down the panic response which tells you, ‘Kill it! Kill it!’

But it’s actually a bad idea, at least according to one expert

Spiders will hide away if they think you can see them – so you won’t be ‘getting rid’ of the spiders in your house, as there are probably more.

Spider expert Matt Bertone of North Carolina State University says that the creatures can also perform a vital function by getting rid of insects.

Bertone said in an essay for The Conversation, ‘It’s OK to have spiders in your home. In fact, it’s normal. And frankly, even if you don’t see them, they’ll still be there.

Bertone says, ‘Although they are generalist predators, apt to eat anything they can catch, spiders regularly capture nuisance pests and even disease-carrying insects – for example, mosquitoes. So killing a spider doesn’t just cost the arachnid its life, it may take an important predator out of your home.’

Bertone suggests that if you’re bothered, you should take the spider outside, where it will happily scuttle off to find a new home.